Department seeks to boost cyber team

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The Cabinet Office is offering an annual salary of up to £60,000 in a bid to recruit an in-house ethical hacker.

The position, which will be based in either Bristol or Manchester, comes with a remit to support the work of so-called “red teams” – the name given to an organisations internal cyber that are dedicated to testing platforms and services through attacks. This work is typically complemented by blue teams activities, the scope of which is to manage the defences against both simulated and real attacks.

Both these functions are often supported by mixed purple teams – with which the ethical hacker will also work – which aim to bring together the defensive and offensive insights of red and blue units.

The goal of the hacking undertaken by the new recruit will be to “highlight risks to services and help prioritise defences”.

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The hacker will then be expected to help create training programmes to improve security, and work alongside “information assurance teams to provide assurances that services are secure”.

The Cabinet Office wants the chosen candidate to “help us to continually improve and automate reporting processes and data collection”. 

Supporting response to security incidents will also be among the position’s key responsibilities.

According to the job advert, the successful applicant will “join a government department undergoing an exciting and significant digital transformation”.

“Cabinet Office are seeking the appointment of a permanent ethical hacker to help support the ambition to make UK government digital services the best in the world,” the advert said. “You will form a crucial part of the cyber security team, where you can expect to work in small multidisciplinary agile teams utilising a modern, forward-thinking approach to security on platforms as diverse as Amazon Web Services with Terraform through to on-premises infrastructure and end user device security.”

It added: “The team operates with a focus on self-service tooling, proactive security monitoring and provision of the education required to solve cross cutting cybersecurity challenges across the Cabinet Office. Working alongside other Ethical Hackers, analysts, engineers and other security professionals you will be responsible for elevating the security of our processes, services and infrastructure by continuously assessing and exploiting vulnerabilities to find out where hacking threats may lie and helping teams address them.”

Applications for the role are open until 11.55pm on Sunday 3 October. The position, which is at civil service grade 7, offers an annual pay packet of between £49,700 and £60,635.